The Local Story behind the Carol “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.”

As we prepare to celebrate Christmas in 2020, many are wondering has there ever been a more difficult season to work through Christmas.  We are experiencing a medical crisis with thousands dying and many more sick from the pandemic.  We have severe racial and political unrest and even a financial crisis taking place.  Families are not permitted to gather or are strongly discouraged from doing so, and it appears this Christmas of 2020 is going to be different than anything we have ever experienced. 

It would be easy to think we have it tough and we are alone in humanity and history in what we are experiencing.  As we turn the pages back in our local history to the time of the Civil War in the Fredericksburg area, we are reminded of what our country and even our local community was experiencing on Christmas.  In December of 1863, our country was at war, right in the middle of the Civil War between the North and the South.  The Fredericksburg, Stafford, Spotsylvania and Orange areas locally became a strategic location for the war, that many called the eastern theatre of the Civil War.  There were several major battles and campaigns in our area.  Just one year prior in December of 1862, nearly 17,000 casualties occurred in the Battle of Fredericksburg.  

A few months later and a few miles west, at the Battle of Chancellorsville over 30,000 casualties in the Wilderness of Spotsylvania.  A year after Chancellorsville, and a few more miles west, another 30,000 casualties occurred in the Battle of the Wilderness in Locust Grove.  A few days later and a few more miles south east, another 30,000 casualties at the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse. 

Christmas for the country and for our local community in the years of 1863 and 1864 was a disaster to say the least.  Each one of these conflicts had several hundred thousands of troops marching through the locals’ properties, taking 

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